


Possess

by sciencefictioness



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Soulmates, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24391774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: Jesse closes his eyes and he is not at home anymore.He is not alone.Jesse is in a large, open room with a high ceiling full of exposed wooden beams and what looks like straw mats spread out on the floor.  Some of the walls are solid, others are made of paper.  Words come to Jesse to unbidden like memories that aren’t his own.  Dojo.  Tatami.  Shoji.  The characters on the pillars are kanji.Jesse is in Japan.  Parts of him, anyway.There are people lingering along the edges of the room.  There are two figures in the center, one of them older with his eyes flashing eerie red, black hair greying at his temples.  In front of him is a boy about Jesse’s age— seventeen.  Eighteen, maybe.  He’s kneeling with his eyes downcast, long hair pulled up into a messy bun, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.  His clothes are hanging down off his left shoulder to expose an intricate tattoo, dragons and storm clouds and lightning in blue and grey and gold.He’s beautiful like nothing Jesse has ever seen, a tangle of contradictions.  He looks delicate.He looks powerful.He’s breathtaking and he’s afraid and oh, fuck.He’s Jesse’s.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 17
Kudos: 477





	Possess

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Resonance zine! Please enjoy.

The sun isn’t up. Not even a glimmer on the horizon outside Jesse’s windows, which means it’s way too fucking early for him to be conscious. It feels like he’s woken from a nightmare, heart racing and body soaked in sweat, but he can’t remember dreaming. The alarm clock is lit up, 4:36 AM in glaring red. Jesse rubs the heel of his palm against one eye as he squints at it in annoyance. 

The trailer is quiet. The other Deadlock he lives with probably only stumbled in a few hours ago, if they’re home at all. Jesse waits for the anxiety to fade, the way it does when nightmares fall away to leave reality in their wake, except it doesn’t. His chest heaves.

He’s  _ terrified. _

_ Please, please, please. _

It’s a voice in his head, in a language he doesn’t speak, but Jesse understands it all the same.

Jesse closes his eyes and he is not at home anymore.

He is not alone.

Jesse is in a large, open room with a high ceiling full of exposed wooden beams and what looks like straw mats spread out on the floor. Some of the walls are solid, others are made of paper, paintings of dragons hanging here and there. Words come to Jesse to unbidden like memories that aren’t his own. Dojo. Tatami. Shoji. The characters on the pillars are kanji. 

Jesse is in Japan. Parts of him, anyway.

There are people lingering along the edges of the room. Some of them are wearing swords on their hips and gazing stoically ahead. Others are staring with blatant interest at what is playing out in front of them.

There are two figures in the center of the room, one of them older with his eyes flashing eerie red, black hair greying at his temples. In front of him is a boy about Jesse’s age— seventeen. Eighteen, maybe. He’s kneeling with his eyes downcast, long hair pulled up into a messy bun, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. His clothes are hanging down off his left shoulder to expose an intricate tattoo, dragons and storm clouds and lightning in blue and grey and gold. 

He’s beautiful like nothing Jesse has ever seen, a tangle of contradictions. He looks delicate.

He looks powerful.

He’s breathtaking and he’s afraid and oh, fuck.

He’s Jesse’s. It hits Jesse like a blow, all of the impact and none of the pain. Jesse has a soulmate.

Jesse has a soulmate and he’s stunning, muscled with fine features and a mouth made for kissing.

A mouth made for  _ Jesse  _ to kiss.

Hanzo.

It comes to him like all the rest. Nothing he needs to learn. Something he just knows.

He’s wincing in anticipation of a blow from the man in front of him. Hanzo’s father, his hand already drawn back, the world around them dragging in slow motion. Jesse steps forward, unable to do anything but close the distance between them— Jesse doesn’t know if it’s the motion that draws his eye, or if Hanzo can just feel him there, the way he can feel Hanzo.

Hanzo looks up at him with his brows drawn together in confusion, glancing around, but no one else reacts; Jesse isn’t really there. He’s thousands of miles away, sitting up in bed in New Mexico, body vacant as everything else in Jesse surges across the world. Only Hanzo can see him. He cocks his head to the side, lips parted and eyes wide, that same astonishment Jesse feels in his chest written plainly across Hanzo’s face.

“Jesse,” Hanzo says, breathy with disbelief, and Jesse smiles.

“Hey there, gorgeous. Mind if I cut in?”

That’s why the bond formed in the first place when two people were drawn together from so far away— someone needed help. Room to breathe, or a way out, if only for a while. Hanzo’s jaw quivers, then steadies, and he reaches out with a shaking hand.

Jesse takes it. Squeezes his fingers. 

Then Hanzo is gone, and Jesse is kneeling instead, wearing Hanzo like a second skin. Smaller than he’s used to being, but more muscled, too. Unfamiliar calluses on his hands, especially on the right side, the tips of Hanzo’s first two fingers rough against his palm. Katanas. Bowstrings. Not that he always needs them.

Hanzo is a weapon even with nothing in his hands. Jesse can sense it, a muscle memory ingrained in him, aggression leashed and ready to be set loose. He feels a brief pang of inadequacy when he thinks of himself, lean and underfed and rangy by comparison, but it passes quickly enough. There isn’t time for that, now.

Jesse thinks of Hanzo at home in his body; in his cluttered room, sitting up in messy sheets. Thinks of him laying down in blankets that smell like Jesse, face tucked into his pillow, nothing to do and nowhere to be for a good, long time. No one will be expecting anything from Jesse for hours and hours, yet, if at all today.

_ Rest a bit, darlin’,  _ Jesse thinks, blood in his mouth but warmth in his chest.

It far away. Hazy like he’s underwater, or has his ears stuffed with cotton, but Hanzo hears him. Feels him. 

_ If you say so.  _ It comes back like the last fragments of a dream he can’t remember; Jesse doesn’t have time to revel in it like he wants. Not when he’s just been dropped into the midst of something miserable. Everything speeds up again, spinning too fast and making Jesse reel in place.

His instinct is to grab Hanzo’s father’s wrist, snatch it out of the air before it can make contact with his cheek— with Hanzo’s cheek— but he resists the impulse. Hanzo is willing to kneel here and bear it, despite the power Jesse can sense bubbling within him. It’s power that pushes back when Jesse reaches for it, like a cat arching into his touch. 

Something that knows Jesse for what he is, and is happy to have him close.

Even with something… inhuman and overwhelming just beneath his skin, gnashing its teeth at the edges of his control, Hanzo fists his hands and pushes through. There is a reason for it. More than one, probably.

Jesse doesn’t know what it is, but things seem to be hard enough for Hanzo already, and he doesn’t want to make it worse. He’ll be more help if no one knows he exists at all. For now.

So Jesse holds his breath, and takes a beating.

For now.

Afterwards Jesse limps his way down hallways that are both foreign and well-tread, as though he’s seen them in movies, or walked them in video games. Hanzo’s room is spartan to say the least. There’s a bed in one corner with nightstand beside it, weapons on the walls, and nothing much else; a scroll with a pair of blue dragons that match his tattoos, a desk with books stacked neatly on top, some framed calligraphy here and there. He tugs down the blankets and collapses into the bed with a sigh, pressing his face into Hanzo’s pillow.

Jesse can’t describe the way it smells. There is soap and shampoo and something medicinal but underneath that, it is only Hanzo. He lets it fill his lungs. Lets it fill all the empty places in him.

Jesse is hard, but it feels wrong to do anything about it without asking first, so he just lays there instead. He needs to find some biotics, maybe, see about getting Hanzo healed up before they switch back. Jesse doesn’t know when that will happen— with time and practice it should be as easy as breathing, but he doesn’t have either of those, yet. 

Someone comes into the room without knocking, closing the door behind themselves and flitting over to the bed. It’s a boy, younger than Hanzo but not by much. It’s his brother.

It’s Genji.

He’s got something in his hands, and he sits on the edge of the bed, worry drawing his brows together and making him look older than he is.

“Are you alright, anija?” He sounds weary, like he expects a fight somehow, and Jesse doesn’t know what to make of that.

He hesitates, but only for a moment. There is love here. Trust that runs deeper than Hanzo’s blood, deeper than his bones. He doesn’t have to lie to Genji. Not about this.

“Ain’t your brother, but I s’pose he’s fine. Nobody gonna come sniffing around back home for a few hours at least.” His accent is bizarre in Hanzo’s voice, even in English. Genji draws back, brows furrowing even further, head tilted to the side in a way that looks decidedly canine.

“Hanzo?”

Jesse laughs and sits up, extending his hand.

“Jesse McCree, at your service.”

It takes Genji a few seconds to put it together, but then he covers his mouth to hide a smile, eyes bright and excited.

“Oh my god,” he says, dropping the metal cylinder in his hand to shake Jesse’s, “Hanzo has a  _ soulmate,  _ what the  _ fuck.” _

The cylinder is a biotic emitter field, something Jesse has only seen in hospitals before now. Genji’s accent is thick, and Jesse wonders if that’s how Hanzo would sound, too, the words there but the pronunciation clunky. The thought makes fondness twist through him, and Jesse smiles wider.

“He sure does. Hey your dad’s a real piece of shit huh? Mind popping that biotic field you got there? I’d appreciate it.”

Genji gives Jesse a strange look and laughs, popping the field with a hiss, soft gold light enveloping them both.

“You are  _ definitely  _ not Hanzo.”

Jesse can feel Hanzo in his mind, but not well enough to get anything coherent from him. He doesn’t know if it’s the distance, or that they’re swapped right now, or the newness of the connection. Anytime people started talking about soulmates Jesse sort of tuned them out; not everybody has one. Less than half the population, thirty percent give or take, and Jesse certainly hadn’t expected he ever would be among them. 

Now he’s regretting it, because he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. Which parts are true, and which are romance tropes spoon fed to readers to sell books. When he gets back to himself he can do research, but he’s loathe to give up Hanzo’s body when it’s still bruised and sore. 

He doesn’t know anything about Hanzo, but he knows he feels like home. The thought of bearing this for Hanzo, letting him come back healed and whole, makes Jesse thrum with contentment. He leans back against the headboard, eyes drooping as the biotics go to work.

“Tell me about him,” Jesse says, and it feels stupidly adoring coming out of his mouth. Genji laughs again, still bewildered, looking his brother up and down but seeing someone else look back.

“What do you want to know?”

Jesse shrugs, lifting Hanzo’s pillow to his face and shamelessly breathing him in.

“Everything. Whatever you think he’d tell me.”

Genji snorts and rolls his eyes.

“Those are two very different things, but alright.”

Genji settles in, and starts talking.

-

The bond between them strengthens, and settles. Jesse didn’t know he was missing a part of himself until Hanzo showed up to fill in the emptiness. They are too far from one another to have the easy sort of telepathy so many soulmate couples have— Jesse has to reach for Hanzo, has to pull. Has to throw his want through their bond sometimes, draw himself through the haze to find Hanzo waiting.

Hanzo is beautiful in a way Jesse can’t articulate. Something he can feel, even when he can’t see him. His humor is dark and dry and it takes Jesse a while to figure out when he’s joking, when he’s serious, when he’s teasing. 

He’s powerful even without the spirits in his skin, smart enough to keep his head above water when his father and half his clan is trying to drown him. 

Hanzo is cunning, and clever, and so close to broken it makes Jesse ache. 

The first beating he takes from Sojiro isn’t the last. Once, twice, a half dozen times, and Hanzo seems to realize he’s calling for Jesse without meaning to, desperate to escape whatever punishment his family has decided he’s earned. 

Jesse wonders why he doesn’t run, except when he’s filling Hanzo up from inside out, he knows. If Genji and Hanzo ran, Sojiro would find them. Would kill Genji, maybe, or maim him— make him a lesson Hanzo had to relearn every day just by looking at him. Something written in scars, painted with blood, etched in bone.

Jesse isn’t patient by nature, but he’s dogged. Weeks pass. Months.

It might take time, but he doesn’t let go.

The clan doesn’t put together that Hanzo has a soulmate, but Ashe certainly does— Hanzo’s silence is expected.

Jesse’s is not. 

She isn’t pleased to lose one of her best men to a stranger who speaks stilted English and doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Not at first.

Then she sees Hanzo in a fight, and she doesn’t mind much anymore. 

Jesse gets to know Sojiro’s fists, and Hanzo gets to know Ashe’s greed, and they don’t have to talk about it to know what needs to be done. Jesse needs out. Hanzo needs out.

Neither of them know how, but it’s all right.

They’ll find a way.

-

Jesse comes to Hanzo when he should still be sleeping, trading his early morning hours for time spent in Hanzo’s bed. If he plunges himself  _ into  _ Hanzo’s body and takes over then Hanzo is whisked away into Jesse’s own, but it doesn’t take long for them to figure out how their bond works. It’s not always easy, and Jesse isn’t really  _ there,  _ but it doesn’t make much difference. The bond makes up for the distance.

Jesse can touch Hanzo. Can feel Hanzo underneath his fingers, and against his skin. 

Can ease him down into his blankets and slot their mouths together, palms slipping under his clothes, Hanzo’s hands tangling in his hair. Jesse doesn’t have to be careful of Hanzo’s bruises; all the places where Sojiro won’t let him heal. His touch never hurts like this, never stings, never aches. 

Hanzo shakes, and Jesse kisses him through it, bodies moving together until they’re both breathless with it. To anyone else it looks like they’re sleeping, having the best of dreams, but it’s the most real thing that Jesse has, now. Hanzo’s scent in his nose, Hanzo’s skin under his tongue.

Hanzo’s fingers laced with his, pressed into his pillows as Jesse loves him, loves him, loves him.

It isn’t enough, but he’ll take every bit of Hanzo he can get.

-

Hanzo comes to Jesse on the edge of losing himself, and he falls into his arms, and breathes there a while. The quiet of Jesse’s room is fine, he insists, but Jesse likes to take him places, too.

_ Where do you want to go,  _ he asks, and Hanzo shrugs.

_ Anywhere but home,  _ and Jesse pulls on clothes, and takes him out into the desert morning. Jesse would happily leave the gorge behind and never come back, but it’s beautiful in the right places, sun coming up over the horizon and shadows playing over the rocks and brush and sand. Jesse takes them high enough that everything feels unreal, feet kicking against dry stone off of some great precipice, Hanzo leaned against his shoulder. They hold hands. Jesse kisses his temple.

Jesse could be happy anywhere if Hanzo never had to go.

-

It isn’t that Jesse doesn’t notice it happening.

He just doesn’t know how to stop it.

Ashe has always been hungry, but there’s a recklessness in her lately that won’t be denied. She’s pushing too hard at the limits of their territory; the limits of their knowledge, the limits of their capabilities. She sends them after scores they can’t handle without the gear or manpower to get the job done, then rages when they come limping back with nothing to show for it. Jesse and Ashe are meant to be partners, but she’s always been a little loud, a little pushy. 

He usually doesn’t mind, because all that boldness is a price he’s willing to pay for the rewards they glean. Putting his ass on the line now for a chance at greater things later had always seemed like a fair trade.

Until Hanzo, that is.

Now Jesse hesitates. Now Jesse questions Ashe in all the places where he would have just nodded,  _ sure, sounds like a plan, how we doin’ this? _

It isn’t just his own life he’s gambing with when he loads his revolver and roars out into the desert on his bike, not anymore. Hanzo wouldn’t die just because Jesse did, but it would be a close thing. 

Jesse tries not to think about losing Hanzo, about the hole that would be left in him, carved out and impossible to fill again. Tries not to think about the way it would ache. A wound that never heals. A scar that’s always sore.

So Jesse is careful, and for Deadlock, careful is suspicious. Careful is weak. 

Careful gets him left behind when Blackwatch comes for them. It stings more than it should— Jesse shed blood for Deadlock more than once. His own, someone else’s.

It isn’t that he didn’t notice, he just didn’t believe.

There are too many Blackwatch agents and only the dregs of the gang left behind to face them, gunfire rattling staccato from somewhere just out of sight. Jesse’s got his revolver up, Hanzo snarling in his ear to run— his dragons swelling in  _ Jesse’s  _ skin, ready to come when  _ he  _ calls. Jesse hesitates.

Hanzo has told him what happens when they answer him. About the devastation they leave in their wake.  _ Utter carnage,  _ he’d said.

_ Wanton destruction. _

Jesse has destroyed enough already. 

He tosses his weapon, puts his hands in the air. Blackwatch doesn’t go easy when they take him down, face shoved in the dirt and hands jerked behind his back,  _ just try me you piece of shit.  _

_ I’d  _ love  _ to put a bullet in you. _

There’s grit in his mouth and cuffs cutting into his wrists and a pair of rough hands jerking him to his feet. Hanzo is livid as he watches it all, lip curled in a snarl and fists clenched, tattoos and eyes both simmering eerie blue. 

Jesse is tossed in the back of a van, then into a cell, forgotten about for a while. Forgotten for the rest of his life, maybe. He doesn’t think about it.

He doesn’t.

He gets a bright orange jumpsuit, fingers pressed to a digital reader, a brand new set of mug shots for his portfolio.

_ Look to the left, flash, now to the right, flash, straight ahead. _

The last pictures of him anyone’s ever gonna take.

Chains on his ankles and a number for a name, locked away in a cell so small he can touch both walls at once, and Jesse is with Hanzo every second he can manage. He’s not on the soulmate registry, and even if he was, there’s nothing they can do to stop him. 

Hanzo comes to him one night, and Jesse holds him close,  _ sorry about the desert, darlin’. _

_ I know you loved watching the sunrise. _

All he can see is concrete and steel and all he can smell is sweat and faded disinfectant and Jesse isn’t made for this; to be kept in a cage like an animal, to never see the sky again. 

He promised Hanzo they’d find a way, but he fucked that up, like he fucks everything up, and now he’s stuck under his father’s thumb and his only escape is into another, less luxurious prison.

_ I can be happy anywhere if you never have to go,  _ Hanzo whispers against his jaw, both of them curled up on Jesse’s cot.

Jesse doesn’t cry.

He doesn’t.

-

He keeps waiting on the ATF or the FBI or some hot shit prosecutor to come read him the riot act, tell him just how fucked he is, but they never do.

Instead he’s dragged out of his cell with no warning, cuffs chained to a desk in a room with a two-way mirror and most uncomfortable chair he’s ever sat in, and in walks Gabriel Reyes. He’s dangerous in a way Jesse has only seen in flashes.

He reminds Jesse of Sojiro, except with the kinds of checks and balances that make him less terrifying. 

Gabriel Reyes has teeth, and a leash. For now, at least.

“Got a proposition for you, Jesse McCree,” he says, and lays it out in black and white. He doesn’t sugar coat it, doesn’t make things soft around the edges.

Reyes needs soldiers. Needs good ones, and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty to make that happen so long as they can be housetrained. Jesse hadn’t put down any of his agents in the melee, so he’s got two choices— rot in his cell, or fall in line.

Jesse smiles. Hanzo is next to him, hand on Jesse’s arm, fingers digging in deep.

It can’t be this easy. It isn’t.

Things will be difficult, he’s sure, but it’s better than wearing orange the rest of his life.

Better than spending it a world away from Hanzo.

“Got a proposition for you too. What do you know about Sojiro Shimada?”

Reyes isn’t expecting that. He cocks his head and pulls out the chair beside him, sitting down without taking his eyes off Jesse.

“What do  _ you  _ know about Sojiro Shimada?”

“Everything,” Jesse says, grin sliding wider. “If you can help me out, that is.”

Turns out, Reyes can.

-

Jesse isn’t allowed to have anything to do with the op in Hanamura. He’s green, and untrained, and no one wants to let him anywhere near a weapon unsupervised right now, let alone a delicate operation where lives hang in the balance. So he sits at the Watchpoint, and waits. It isn’t any hardship.

He’s not really there.

He’s with Hanzo, watching the clan come tumbling down, Blackwatch swarming through them like hornets. He watches them get put on their faces, hands behind their backs, cuffed rough and merciless just like he was a few weeks before.

Jesse would feel sorry for them, except he really doesn’t.

Soulmates have miles of special legislation governing them. A laundry list of laws regarding crimes committed when switched; liabilities, exploitation.

It means when Hanzo’s dropship lands at the Watchpoint, even as brand new recruits, they’re allotted time together. Two weeks doesn’t feel like a lot in the scheme of things, but Reyes had been anything but pleased. Jesse will take what he can get.

What Jesse gets is Hanzo walking down off an Overwatch transport already dressed in Blackwatch casuals, hair still tied back in a blood spattered silk ribbon.

What Jesse gets is Hanzo standing in front of him, eyes bright and chest heaving, leaning into Jesse’s hand as he palms his cheek; it’s nothing like before. He’s hot under Jesse’s fingers, and Jesse can feel him  _ breathing,  _ and for the first time in his life Jesse is right where he needs to be. 

What Jesse gets is Hanzo taking fistfulls of his shirt and dragging him down, lifted up on his toes to press their lips together. Hanzo’s mouth is warm and wet and his teeth are sharp and his hands clutch and cling and Jesse isn’t sure they’re going to make it back to their quarters, but then Gabriel is yelling at him,  _ what the fuck, agent, get your shit together!  _ There’s business to attend to first, but it won’t take long.

Then what Jesse gets is all of Hanzo, always.

  
  
  



End file.
